The international soccer league FIFA announced it had been hacked earlier this year and is bracing itself for a potential data breach.
This latest cyber incident marks the second major successful hack on the organization, the first reported in 2017. That attack was attributed to a Russian hacking group alternately called Fancy Bear and APT28.
News of this new hack was made public after FIFA documents were published on a website called Football Leaks, a whistleblower website dedicated to the soccer world. FIFA president Gianni Infantino spoke about the breach last week while in Rwanda, saying that he expects private information to be released.
More damaging to FIFA is the consortium of European news organizations writing articles based on the leaked information. Der Spiegel was the first to do so, but others have started sifting through and reporting on what media outlets are calling the “largest ever leak in journalism.” According to Naked Security, there are “more than 70 million documents, totaling 3.4 terabytes of data that cover events leading up to this year.”
The 2017 Fancy Bear hack leaked a wide variety of embarrassing and illegal behavior. Leaked information included failed drug tests for players, and records of doping by athletes, causing a torrent of bad publicity for the already scandal-ridden organization.
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